4.  The applicant was born in 1954 and lives in Wrocław.
5.  On an unspecified date the applicant’s father J.R. married M.K., his second wife. On 22 December 1994 they made a will before a notary, appointing each other sole beneficiaries of their wills. They both had children from their previous marriages.
6.  On 21 March 1995 M.K. died. On 7 September 1995 her daughter K.C. applied for a declaration of acquisition of M.K.’s estate on the basis of a handwritten will made on 7 May 1990 by K.C. in the name of her mother. J.R. requested a declaration of acquisition of the estate on the basis of the will made in 1994.
7.  On 19 February 1996 J.R. died. On 7 April 1997 the Radom District Court declared that his four children had acquired his estate.
8.  The proceedings concerning the estate of M.K, carried out by the Radom District Court, were stayed because of J.R.’s death and later resumed on 8 September 1997 with the participation of his heirs. The will of 1990 proved to be null and void because it had not been made by the testator herself. Since some of the participants disputed the validity of the will of 1994, the court appointed an expert in psychiatry, who submitted his opinion over two months later.
9.  On 29 September 1998 the Radom District Court allowed a request of a party to appoint an expert in neurology.
10.  On 27 November 1998 a witness failed to appear in court; he was fined and heard by the court on 23 December 1998. At the same hearing the court appointed an expert in neurology, who submitted his opinion a month later.
11.  On 28 May 1999 the court heard the expert witness and the parties. The applicant requested that three parties be examined by courts at their places of domicile – in Wrocław, Kamienna Góra and Zawiercie. The last testimony taken this way was delivered to the Radom District Court in November 1999.
12.  On 28 October 1999 the applicant requested the court to admit as evidence an opinion to be prepared by the Institute of Psychiatry of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.
13.  The Institute in Kraków, after an exchange of correspondence with the court, refused to prepare the expert opinion. The request to issue an opinion in the case was subsequently addressed to the Medical Academy Institute in Wrocław. The Institute also refused to accept the assignment, but it was eventually obliged to do so by the court on 20 June 2000.
14.  The opinion issued by the Institute was subsequently challenged by the party K.C. Following her request the court decided to examine the experts with the judicial assistance of the District Court in Wrocław. Their testimonies were submitted on 3 April 2001.
15.  K.C. requested the court to admit further evidence from experts in psychiatry and graphology. The court allowed the requests on 9 September 2001. On 1 October 2001 it requested the Institute of Psychiatry in Warsaw to prepare an opinion in the case. On 5 November 2001 the Institute informed the court that it would not be able to prepare it before June 2002. The court accepted this date.
16.  On 14 February 2002 the Institute informed the court that it would not be able to issue the opinion before December 2002 or even later. On 20 February 2002 the court notified K.C., but not the other parties, of this situation. On 8 April K.C. accepted this new date.
17.  On 7 November 2002 the court admitted K.C.’s request to examine the relations between J.R. and his children.
18.  On 9 January 2003 the Institute finally submitted the opinion.
19.  A hearing scheduled for 11 March 2003 was adjourned as K.C had informed the court on the same day that she was ill. Hearings scheduled for 28 April, 28 May and 19 August 2003 were adjourned at the requests of K.C.’s lawyer, which were made to the court shortly before the hearings. K.C. informed the court that she intended to change her lawyer.
20.  Her new lawyer requested that the psychiatric opinion of the Warsaw Institute be supplemented by adding details of the testator’s stay in a hospital, in the orthopaedics department. The court ordered K.C. to pay the relevant fee and adjourned the case. After an exchange of correspondence which continued until 6 February 2004, the hospital informed the court that M.K. had never been a patient there.
21.  On 23 September 2003 the applicant’s lawyer requested an opinion of an expert in graphology on the 1990 will. The court admitted the motion and requested the applicant to pay the relevant fee. The applicant failed to pay, maintaining that this evidence was irrelevant for her and for the case since it had already been established that the will was null and void.
22.  On 6 February 2004 K.C. informed the court that her lawyer had been suspended from practice. She requested an adjournment of the hearing to enable her to appoint a new lawyer. She also requested that an expert be appointed to compare signatures on the wills, in particular the signature on the notarial will.
23.  On 14 April 2004 the court decided not to allow the expert evidence requested by K.C. since she had not paid the relevant fee.
24.  The hearing scheduled for 4 June 2004 was adjourned as K.C.’s new lawyer was ill.
25.  On 13 August 2004 the court quashed its decision to request a supplementary medical opinion.
26.  On 6 September 2004, at K.C.’s request, the court quashed its decision of 14 April 2004 and appointed an expert in graphology.
27.  A hearing was held on 11 January 2005.
28.  On 10 February 2005 an expert in graphology submitted her opinion.
29.  A hearing was held on 29 March 2005. The court refused ‑ following the applicant’s objection – another request by K.C. for new evidence to be taken.
30.  On 12 April 2005 the Radom District Court delivered a decision by which it declared that M.K.’s estate had been acquired by the applicant’s father J.R. on the basis of the 1994 will.
31.  The applicant requested written grounds for this decision, which were served on her on 13 June 2005. The proceedings were terminated.
32.  On 6 September 2004 the applicant lodged a complaint under the 2004 Law of 17 June 2004 on complaints about a breach of the right to a trial within a reasonable time (Ustawa o skardze na naruszenie prawa strony do rozpoznania sprawy w postępowaniu sądowym bez nieuzasadnionej zwłoki) (“the 2004 Act”), alleging excessive length of proceedings.
33.  On 26 November 2004 the Radom Regional Court found that the proceedings taken as a whole had not been excessively long. However, certain parts of them had indeed been affected by undue delays. The court pointed to the inactivity of the District Court when the submission of an expert opinion had been delayed. The Radom Regional Court also criticised the fact that the lower court had failed to discipline the plaintiff’s lawyer, who had failed to attend hearings. It further stressed that the District Court had adjourned several hearings without giving sufficient reasons. The court also instructed the lower court to schedule a hearing within twenty-one days.
34.  The Regional Court further observed that the case had been complex and that the parties had made numerous requests for evidence to be taken and that those circumstances had had a considerable bearing on the total length of the proceedings. Bearing this in mind, although it found that the length of the proceedings had been excessive, the court concluded that the applicant was not entitled to just satisfaction under the provisions of the 2004 Act.
35.  On 18 February 2005 the applicant lodged a second complaint under the 2004 Act. On 24 February 2005 the Radom Regional Court rejected the complaint as it had been lodged within twelve months of the previous complaint (see Relevant domestic law below).